There are imho some problems with missile units that lower their efficiency :
1. and most important you can use decoys . If you place your troops e.g. like that :
Code:
rear front
xxx x <-- decoy
xxx
xxxx
xxxx
xxxx
xxx
xxx x <-- decoy
Then likely a few volleys are wasted on the decoys for no effect at all . With scripting of archers you can avoid this a bit but not completely . PD archers can't be scripted and will always waste their volleys on the decoys .
Then there is the next problem :
2. Archer protection and storm :
If you have no staff of storms some strong fliers like devils or fiends of darkness will slaughter your archers quickly . If you have a staff of storms then your archers are protected but less effective because of the storm .
So basically archers are weak imho , but there is the exeption wind guide + flaming arrows .
With these 2 buffs archers are quite powerful .
But to that there are other counters . The various kinds of archers are all low hp and low protection . If you use wind guide + flaming arrows you normally try to gather 50-100 archers . This leads to supplyproblems . You can cure that with vinebags etc. but this leads normally to a quite big army : 50-100 archers , 20-50 fodder troops at least and at least 1 wind guide and 1 flaming arrow caster .
This kind of army is a good target for flames from the sky , ghost riders , ashen angel etc. .
And the archers are quite bad in battles , any of the massive damage spells wipes them out quickly .
While knights etc. can survive earthquake , rain of stones , flame storm etc. the archers die extremely easy to it .
And last but not least they do massive friendly fire casualities
.